What was the music debated the buckley report about?

Answer 1

The National History Day (NHD) Contest proposes a series of sample topics, one among them entitled "Music Debated: The Buckley Report." NHD gives scant details on what the topic entails beyond the following sentence: "What about the 1955 debate proposing a connection between Rock Music and juvenile delinquency or The Buckley Report and the heated debate correlating rock music to drug abuse?"

Given the lack of information and context, based on the title some students have conflated the topic as concerning only one historical item, but there are in fact two: the "1955 debate" and The Buckley Report. Given the name Buckley, some have assumed this refers to the conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. It turns out that the Buckley in question is his brother, former Senator James L. Buckley, who investigated the topic in Congressional hearings in 1973. More details on can be found in a book on rock music called The Politics of Rock Music by John M. Orman (Nelson-Hall, 1984):

"The Buckley Report: More elite response to rock music came in the form of a hearing by former Senator James Buckley ... and the relationship between rock music and the drug epidemic. Buckley started his investigation during the summer of 1973 in response to a column in the New York Times by former Nixon aide William Safire. He accused Columbia Records and its parent company CBS of engaging in payola...

"Buckley was concerned that since rock had become the most popular form of entertainment according to economic figures and since rock music had special power over young people according to many rock critics, then the industry must show that it understands its special responsibility to American youth."

The 1955 "debate" NHD refers to was in fact U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearings that attempted to link rock 'n' roll music and juvenile delinquency. The hearings are referenced in the book Popular Music and Society: Volume 14(4) (Bowling Green University Popular Press, Winter 1990). The full title of the subcommittee was Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, which was charged with the task of the "investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States."

Was any of this material captured on this film? Given that both hearings occurred before the taping of Senate hearings or debates was commonplace, unless a news broadcaster at the time (ABC, NBC, etc.) filmed a portion for a nightly news segment, the answer would likely be no.